Expansion and Settlement in Clash

[Lord God Jinnai]

What i meant is that only nomads should have the option to explore a few areas around their them as they would so many other disadvantages vs. advantages.

[Gary Thomas]

Rather by accident in an email exchange between Mark and I another way of handling settlers emerged. This is that any combination of settlers (of whatever ethnicity) may be attached to any unit, which then escorts them. So the "settler unit" is actually just a any unit, with settlers attached. This avoids the necessity for specialist settler units, which has a number of unfortunate by-products. This is currently my preferred way of implementing settler units.

I am sort of stuck until this issue is decided, so I am forced to spend my time on those boring filler occupations, you know, drinking beer, watching rugby, betting on horses, even a little bit of wistful lusting.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Not to prematurely end your pursuit of those boring filler occupations...

Does the solution let us show a settler icon to the player as part of a command? Seems that is fairly important.

Can we fudge a 'bare' settler? I.e. technically there may be a unit escorting the settlers but it is zero-strength.

If we can pass these tests, my vote is charge ahead. Of course after due respects are paid to beer, rugby, horses, and lusting, but hopefully not all at the same time.

[Gary Thomas]

Does the solution let us show a settler icon to the player as part of a command? Seems that is fairly important.

Unfortunately we do not have a settler icon. When we get one there will be no problem.

Can we fudge a 'bare' settler? I.e. technically there may be a unit escorting the settlers but it is zero-strength.

If we bear in mind that the unit will continue to exist after settlement.

It is entirely possible to pursue all four filler occupations simultaneously, if you pick your pub carefully.

Cheers

[axi]

If we create a "militia" unit, expressing the military power of population units, then that unit can be the carrying body for settling populations. After settlement or in the normal populated squares, the militia unit is "put to sleep" (disappears) with the potential to respawn when there is a threat or when population moves again. Militias should be relatively weak and normally not be a real threat to normal units.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gents:

If we have a 'bare' settler, we can just make it part of the unloading procedure that after all people and resources are offloaded that it just calls a method to kill itself. Just as I imagine death of units in combat works. Axi, your idea ain't bad either, in this case the militia unit would demobilize, which we'll have rules and code for some day...

[Gary Thomas]

Well, I have a unit with settlers colonizing a square, and creating a province. Of course there are no resources there, and no production of any kind. No matter how I fiddle the province economic factors, I can't seem to cause any changes to the population. There doesn't seem to be any way of seeing the resources, such as food production, or anything else. Or am I missing something?

I also need to know where the map visible resources are stored.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Gary:

Before I forget, can you attach a zip with the current source to your next post here? I had meant to take the source code on vacation but forgot. Everything I say here will be based on memory...

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
Well, I have a unit with settlers colonizing a square, and creating a province. Of course there are no resources there, and no production of any kind.

Last I knew the MapSquareEconomy constructor adds the "standard" resources. However you may have changed that without my noticing.

No matter how I fiddle the province economic factors, I can't seem to cause any changes to the population. There doesn't seem to be any way of seeing the resources, such as food production, or anything else. Or am I missing something?

There are two ways to see food production etc. One is using the info window of the econ gui. It shows production in each sector. For more detailed info, you should select the square of interest, and then run a turn. A very detailed econ output for that square is then appended to economy.txt. Make sure you go to the end of the file, since if a different square was selected earlier, the output at the start of the file will be given for that one rather than the newly-populated one you're interested in.

I also need to know where the map visible resources are stored.

All resources are stored in Terrain or whatever its called in MapSquare. The storage of the specials used to be done in the scenario code. You can look back to an old version if you want to see the details.

[Gary Thomas]

Before I forget, can you attach a zip with the current source to your next post here? I had meant to take the source code on vacation but forgot. Everything I say here will be based on memory...

I am reluctant, but will if you insist. Why don't you get a hotmail account and I will send it there? Only takes a few minutes.

Last I knew the MapSquareEconomy constructor adds the "standard" resources. However you may have changed that without my noticing.

And without me noticing. Has the fact that you have to have several preliminary economics turns got anything to do with it?

There are two ways to see food production etc. One is using the info window of the econ gui. It shows production in each sector.

Tried that and nothing happened.

For more detailed info, you should select the square of interest, and then run a turn. A very detailed econ output for that square is then appended to economy.txt.

I don't think that players will want to do that.

All resources are stored in Terrain or whatever its called in MapSquare. The storage of the specials used to be done in the scenario code. You can look back to an old version if you want to see the details.

I will have a look. As far as I know, the only thing we have is a lot of strings called "sites". Are these resources?

Anyway, until you get back might be a good time for me to implement coastlines since sas has sent me the tiles. I have got the xml over-writing (that is, adding a new ruler to a standard civilization) written and compiled, but not tested.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
Anyway, until you get back might be a good time for me to implement coastlines since sas has sent me the tiles. I have got the xml over-writing (that is, adding a new ruler to a standard civilization) written and compiled, but not tested.

Hi Gary, that sounds best from several perspectives.

Has the fact that you have to have several preliminary economics turns got anything to do with it?

All those turns do is make the economy reach equilibrium state before the player sees it, and allows things like growth rate to be available.

Tried [econ info window] and nothing happened.

You mean nothing comes up at all? I wonder if a MapSquareEconomy exists for the square? Best to leave till I get home. I can probably see what is wrong in a few minutes there.

I don't think that players will want to [look in economy.txt file].

Huh? I thought you wanted info to allow you do debug...

I will have a look. As far as I know, the only thing we have is a lot of strings called "sites". Are these resources?

Yep, that's them. The "farm" one is for farm sites etc.

[Gary Thomas]

Yep, that's them. The "farm" one is for farm sites etc.

Now you have me confused. Are they supposed to be represented by resource icons?

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gary:

I Said:
Yep, that's them. The "farm" one is for farm sites etc.

You Said:
Now you have me confused. Are they supposed to be represented by resource icons?

The short answer is no, farm and the other types of sites that are present most everywhere are not meant to be shown on the map as the specials are. But the resource model that exists now makes no distinction between specials (gold, tin...) and the other types of sites (farm, resources, manufactured goods, and services). Perhaps we should have a Sites class having a child SpecialSites class to make the distinction between farm sites (most everywhere has some) and gold mining sites (rare, and shown on map).

[Gary Thomas]

Well, you should know by now how I am likely to react! Are all the special sites the ones to show on the map? Is there provision in the model for depletion?

It seems to me that there is scope here for more xml stuff.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gary:

We (the team) have talked about depletion long ago. There are no firm plans for how to model it, other than it would be good to have. I think depletion is extremely low priority at this point. As you say, there are xml issues. I think depletion issues are for 2003 at the earliest.

[Mark_Everson]

I'm now most of the way through the code to support figuring out when people would want to migrate. For the record I'm going to put down the simple economics-driven population diffusion approach. It will get more complicated than this as we get beyond simple economics, but that seems like a logical place to start. Here are the simple foundations:

1. The people in a square have an "economic happiness" that is essentially per-capita after-tax income. For an occupied square this is easy to calculate. For an empty square I have "Settlement Plan" code that outlines what the economy of a square would look like if it were settled by X people bringing Y resources with them as capital for the economy.

2. For now, the driver of migration will be that the foreseen economic happiness in a new location must be Z% greater than what is available in the square of origin. I'm thinking of starting with a number like 50%, but only playtesting will tell what the right values are.

3. At present I don't know exactly how to determine what the X and Y in item 1 are. In general the number of people migrating would be at most five percent or so of the total population. Of course military invasions etc. can give more drastic results, but I"m not there yet. Now I'm thinking something like that the people that decide to go then save up out of their discretionary income to give them the resources to set up shop in their new home. Once they have those resources they make the move.

Comments, ideas welcome...